Plouffe: Romney the ‘godfather’ of Obama health reforms

White House senior adviser David Plouffe is making the most direct attempt yet to tie Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney to President Barack Obama’s health care reforms by referring to him the “godfather” of the law.

Speaking to ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on Sunday, Plouffe dismissed low approval ratings for the Affordable Care Act as a result of Republican “fear mongering.”

“Most of the law doesn’t take effect until 2012,” Plouffe explained. “We’ve hand hundreds of millions of dollars of propaganda spent against it. Now, you are seeing parts of the law come into effect. Kids between 21 and 26, over 21 million of them, now have health insurance. They can stay on their parents plan because of the health care reform law. You’ve got over 5 million seniors now getting $600, roughly, for prescription drug assistance. Women are treated equally as men in our system. There are free preventive care like mammograms and cancer screenings.”

“So, we just have to tell the story of this,” he continued. “One thing I’m confident of is by the end of the decade, we’re going to be very glad the Republicans termed this Obamacare. Because when the reality of health care is in place, it’s going to be nothing like the kind of fear mongering that was done.”

Plouffe added that the White House was “confident” that the Supreme Court would uphold the law.

“You had Democratic and Republican jurists upheld it in lower court decisions, including two very prominent conservative jurists. The mandate is an idea supported by the Heritage Foundation, Newt Gingrich, Bob Dole, most famously kind of the godfather of the mandate, Mitt Romney.”

Romney, who enacted individual health care mandates while serving as the governor of Massachusetts, has promised to repeal Obama’s health care reforms.

About the Author

David Edwards has served as an editor at Raw Story since 2006. His work can also be found at Crooks & Liars, and he's also been published at The BRAD BLOG. He came to Raw Story after working as a network manager for the state of North Carolina and as as engineer developing enterprise resource planning software. Follow him on Twitter at @DavidEdwards.